Making Room for Action

Making Room for Action is a day-long program of talks, screenings, conversations, and performances with an international group of architects, scholars, and artists addressing how performance can serve as a radical tool to rethink the discipline of architecture. In keeping with Performa’s open-classroom approach, this conference is open to both speakers and audience members to join in.

2:30pm: Opening remarks

2:45pm: Lecture-performance by Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco
Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco’s lecture-performance focuses on Ciudad en el Espacio (City in Space), a short-lived experiment by the Taller de Arquitectura/Ricardo Bofill in Madrid in 1969, inspired by the experimental methods of American performance group The Living Theater.

3:00pm: Liz Diller and RoseLee Goldberg in conversation
This conversation will survey Diller Scofidio + Renfro's work in live performance while tracing how this critical approach to space has informed and shaped their buildings throughout their four-decade-long practice.

4:15pm: Selling Dreams by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine (screening), with a response by Ife Vanable
Mark, the protagonist of this documentary followed by Bêka and Lemoine recounts his idiosyncratic strategies for selling tailor-made dreams to guests looking for a “true Scandinavian experience” on an infamous home sharing platform.

5:00pm: Panel discussion with Giovanna Borasi, Yve Laris Cohen, and Thom Moran (T+E+A+M)
While performance can challenge the conventions of the built environment, it may also offer invaluable source of first-hand information to architects. These three speakers explore the many possibilities of exchange between performance and architecture in their diverse practices.

6:00pm: Lecture-performance by Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe)
How do you turn a tree into a financial asset? In Offsetted, the duo explores the legacy of “America’s greenest mayor,” Michael Bloomberg, who championed afforestation (the process of planting trees in areas devoid of any) to increase local resistance to storms and improve energy conservation, while at the same time transforming trees into carbon reserves for industrialists to offset their environmental damage.

Co-organized by Charles Aubin and Carlos Mínguez Carrasco.

Research assistants: Juliana Stadelmann, Vera Petukhova, and Gabrielle Printz
Special thanks to Marielle Pelissero, John A. Delgado (Prospect Park) and Chris Fox (Bigreuse)
Making Room for Action is a program of the Performa Institute.
The Performa Institute is supported by The David & Elaine Potter Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Making Room for Action received additional support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Consulate General of Spain New York.

Making Room for Action is a day-long program of talks, screenings, and performances addressing how performance can interrogate, challenge, and inform the field of architecture from multiple viewpoints.